


Dreams of Cruelty

by MercySewerPyro



Series: A Thousand Painted Teeth [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Buried Alive, Drowning, Gen, Nightmares, but this vision might not come to pass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24077998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercySewerPyro/pseuds/MercySewerPyro
Summary: When the dreams of dead siblings cease, Commander Cody is not free from his nightmares.If anything, the terrors that fill the vacuum are far worse.
Series: A Thousand Painted Teeth [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728298
Comments: 11
Kudos: 92





	Dreams of Cruelty

_ One, Three, Six, Nine  
_ _ One by one fell into line  
_ _ Nine, Six, Three, One  
_ _ Caught the ire of the Sun  
_ _ Six, Nine, One, Three  
_ _ One by one they had to flee  
_

_ One, Two, Three to Five  
_ _ The only ones that still survive _

* * *

When the nightmares cease, when Cody dreams of things other than a thousand dead siblings (a thousand stars winking out, their blood congealing thickly around him) it is not necessarily better. In fact, it is almost always worse: a night terror that swamps everything and threatens to drag the Commander under.

He knows how to deal with guilt, how to deal with death. He gathers those feelings inside of himself, a bundle of fear-grief-hate, tighter and tighter- And then throws it away, as much as he can. As a Marshal Commander, as  _ vod’alor _ , he cannot let these feelings become him. And when it becomes too much, when he threatens to drown, he knows he has those he can reach out to. His  _ vod’ika _ Rex, proud Ordo, prickly Wolffe. These and countless others, if he asks; he is their leader and they are his responsibility, but that doesn’t mean they won’t help him shoulder the burden.

But these dreams are different. They are dreams not of guilt, not of past sins, but dreams of cruelty. Dreams in which he is not himself. And that, this vicious, alien thing that bubbles up in these night terrors, he does not know how to weather.

They always start the same: a gun in his hands, his Jedi ahead of him, brothers at his sides in a sea of gold. It’s just another mission, vivid enough to be almost real. But something curls into his head, and his hands move without his own volition, aiming, firing-

Sometimes, the blaster bolt hits, and Kenobi goes down. The air is filled with searing blue, blasters upon blasters firing, a thousand painted teeth turned on someone they should never be aiming for- And all the while his mind screams _Good Soldiers Follow Orders._ Cody doesn’t know if these ones are worse than their alternative; in these ones lies a world where Cody is trapped inside himself, and something cold and unfeeling and cruel takes his place.

In the second kind, he never takes the shot. There is never blue drowning his Jedi General; instead it is Cody who drowns, what he had thought was mud at his feet becoming a black like tar around his boots, climbing up his legs, pulling him down. He claws for release, crying out for help. The world around him blurs, black filling his throat (did it spill into there from around him, the helmet unable to hold the tide, or did it come up from inside him?) and the black takes him under.

He [drowns,](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/276769648060661760/728319051268620730/NIGHTMARES.png) but he doesn’t die. Perhaps, that is worse.

In the dreams he shoots his own General, the dream ends there, terrible yet finished. Cody wakes up breathing heavily, forced to wakefulness and kept from sleep. In these dreams, there is no waking at the first. Perhaps they are better, for having not committed the deed- But they are terrible all the same.

Instead when the black ebbs, pooling around him but no longer submerging, he is trapped. Metal containing him, a box, a coffin, a tomb- He screams and screams but no one hears, scratches and scratches at the lid but never breaks out of his prison. There are marks across the top, deep scratches in the cold metal (both his and not his; he made them but never could have, the claws of a predator, of a legend) and yet they’re not there at all. As if they were mere wishes, mirages only there out of sheer hallucinatory desperation. Sometimes, there, Cody finds he cannot move, and the stench of his own death threatens to overwhelm him.

But every time, he knows he’s trapped. He knows he’s alone. No one is coming for him, and no one ever will. Something in him rages against it, spits fury at everyone who dared abandon him; this part is crazed, wild and delirious, but it doesn’t change that he fully believes it would claw everyone he knows to shreds. The rest crumples in sadness, in a guilt far too familiar and yet not his own.

And all the while, the black oozes, from- Cody’s not sure. From him, maybe, or the walls of his tomb. It is the dream of a thing unhinged, of a thing cruel from madness. It is the dream of something not him.

It always feels like centuries there, eons of waiting, screaming to be let out. Even though he should have long gone hoarse, and have crumbled into bones and dust.

When he wakes up, it is always a full rest- Body rested, but mind whirling with the leftover emotions still cooling. It is terrible, and Cody can only thank the Force and whatever gods there may be that these terrible nightmares are rare. After all, how can he bring such a thing to his siblings? There is a burden here that is too alien to tell of.

So Cody shoulders it alone. And hopes, with all of his being, that they aren’t a vision that will one day come to pass.

* * *

_ Six, Seven, Eight, Nine _ _  
_ _ All gone mad and lost to time  
_ _ Seven, Six, Nine, Eight  
_ _ Bound in fear and doomed to wait  
_ _ Nine, Eight, Seven, Six _ _  
_ _ Until that day with stolen trick _ _  
_ _ Eight, Nine, Six, Seven _ _  
_ _ From that place they were driven _

  
_ Seventh lost, doomed to roam _ _  
_ _ Died and fell as they reached home _

**Author's Note:**

> vod'alor - Sibling-leader
> 
> Name taken from the Team Fortress 2 track 'Dreams of Cruelty'.


End file.
